


Reprise Your Role

by prosopopeya



Category: Glee, bare: A Pop Opera - Hartmere/Intrabartolo
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, POV Second Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 05:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosopopeya/pseuds/prosopopeya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what you wanted -- on the surface. What's underneath doesn't matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reprise Your Role

**Author's Note:**

> Purely and simply, this is two of my favorite characters mashed together because they have matching issues. It's an AU in that Jason doesn't die at the end of bare; instead, he marries Quinn Fabray.

**Reprise Your Role**

You think he’s pretty handsome, not a bad catch overall, except, of course, that he’s gay and he doesn’t want you any more than you want you. He tries, though. That’s as much as you can muster for yourself, so that has to count for something.

You met in a counselor’s office at Harvard, him with shame in his eyes and you without any faith in yours, and you decide to like him when the both of you chicken out of staying. You get coffee instead, laugh off the reasons that brought you and inevitably drove you to leave that office. Neither one of you tells the truth, you both know it.

It becomes a weekly, then a daily thing.

You can’t say when you find out that he’s gay, except you just know; you can’t say how he knows you have/had a child, except he’s maybe seen you try not to cry at strollers, at toddlers. It never really becomes dating; there’s certainly no romance in it—not for you because you’ve given up on it, and not for him because he’s not really into this. Probably he would argue, say he really cares, and hell, maybe he does. That’s not really important to you, though.

What matters is that he’s there, always there, and he does everything right. There are flowers on your birthday and Valentine’s Day, always your favorite, always big enough to be shameful. There’s jewelry for Christmas, and ties and suits for Thanksgiving at your parents’, and you know how to give him what he needs: a dress, a sweet face, all the right lines to his parents on New Year’s. You kiss at midnight each year, and you can feel his parents’ eyes on you all the while. You doesn’t ask him about it, though. You don’t _do_ that.

You don’t have kids. You don’t even try. That’s one game of pretend that you’re not eager to play—not now, not anymore. He says he can’t—the _illness_ is his explanation, and by the way his parents’ lips thin, you know not to press because you don’t call each other on your bullshit.

You’re not really happy, and neither is he, but that’s not what you wanted. You wanted this: the house, the husband, the clothes and the hair. So you don’t have the two kids, blond and blue-eyed and reaching up at you with bright eyes, pulling you into a warm hug, but hey. Your acting skills only go so far.


End file.
